I am about to share with you a brilliant piece of research from the Article II Political Action Committee. After reading it the foremost question on my mind is, “If the natural born citizen definition only requires one citizen parent then why did they seemingly try so hard to change the law for Barack Obama?”

There are multiple links to official congressional documents throughout, contained in the research below, so I would urge you to draw your own conclusions.

But from my point of view this research either strongly, or at least partly, validates the following conclusions:

Attempts to redefine or amend Article II “natural born Citizen” Clause of the U.S. Constitution:

The effort to remove the natural-born citizen requirement from the U.S. Constitution actually began in 1975 – when Democrat House Rep. Jonathon B. Bingham, [NY-22] introduced a constitutional amendment underH.J.R. 33: which called for the outright removal of the natural-born requirement for president found in Article II of the U.S. Constitution – “Provides that a citizen of the United States otherwise eligible to hold the Office of President shall not be ineligible because such citizen is not a natural born citizen.”

Bingham’s first attempt failed and he resurrected H.J.R. 33: in 1977 under H.J.R. 38:, again failing to gain support from members of congress. Bingham was a Yale Law grad and member of the secret society Skull and Bones, later a lecturer at Columbia Law and thick as thieves with the United Nations via his membership in the Council on Foreign Relations.

Bingham’s work lay dormant for twenty-six years when it was resurrected again in 2003 as Democrat members of Congress made no less than eight (8) attempts in twenty-two (22) months, to either eliminate the natural-born requirement, or redefine natural-born to accommodate Barack Hussein Obama II in advance of his rise to power. The evidence is right in the congressional record…

1. On June 11, 2003 Democrat House member Vic Snyder [AR-2] introduced H.J.R 59: in the 108th Congress – “Constitutional Amendment – Makes a person who has been a citizen of the United States for at least 35 years and who has been a resident within the United States for at least 14 years eligible to hold the office of President or Vice President.” – Co-Sponsors: Rep Conyers, John, Jr. [MI-14]; Rep Delahunt, William D. [MA-10]; Rep Frank, Barney [MA-4]; Rep Issa, Darrell E. [CA-49]; Rep LaHood, Ray [IL-18]; Rep Shays, Christopher [CT-4].

2. On September 3, 2003, Rep. John Conyers [MI] introduced H.J.R. 67: – “Constitutional Amendment – Makes a person who has been a citizen of the United States for at least 20 years eligible to hold the office of President.” – Co-Sponsor Rep Sherman, Brad [CA-27]

3. On February 25, 2004, Republican Senator Don Nickles [OK] attempted to counter the growing Democrat onslaught aimed at removing the natural-born citizen requirement for president in S.2128: – “Natural Born Citizen Act – Defines the constitutional term “natural born citizen,” to establish eligibility for the Office of President” – also getting the definition of natural born citizen wrong. – Co-sponsors Sen Inhofe, James M. [OK]; Sen Landrieu, Mary L. [LA]

4. On September 15, 2004 – as Barack Obama was about to be introduced as the new messiah of the Democrat Party at the DNC convention, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher [CA-46] introduced H.J.R. 104: – “Constitutional Amendment – “Makes eligible for the Office of the President non-native born persons who have held U.S. citizenship for at least 20 years and who are otherwise eligible to hold such Office.” – No co-sponsors.

5. Again on January 4, 2005, Rep John Conyers [MI] introduced H.J.R. 2: to the 109th Congress – “Constitutional Amendment – Makes a person who has been a citizen of the United States for at least 20 years eligible to hold the Office of President.” – Co-Sponsor Rep Sherman, Brad [CA-27]

6. Rep Dana Rohrabacher [CA-46] tries again on February 1, 2005 in H.J.R. 15: – “Constitutional Amendment – Makes eligible for the Office of the President non-native born persons who have held U.S. citizenship for at least 20 years and who are otherwise eligible to hold such Office.” – No Co-Sponsor

7. On April 14, 2005, Rep Vic Snyder [AR-2] tries yet again with H.J.R. 42: – “Constitutional Amendment – Makes a person who has been a citizen of the United States for at least 35 years and who has been a resident within the United States for at least 14 years eligible to hold the office of President or Vice President.” – Co-Sponsor Rep Shays, Christopher [CT-4]

8. All of these efforts failing in committee and the 2008 presidential election looming with an unconstitutional candidate leading the DNC ticket, Democrat Senator Claire McCaskill, [MO] tries to attach the alteration to a military bill in S.2678: on February 28, 2008 – “Children of Military Families Natural Born Citizen Act – Declares that the term “natural born Citizen” in article II, section 1, clause 5 of the Constitution, dealing with the criteria for election to President of the United States, includes any person born to any U.S. citizen while serving in the active or reserve components of the U.S. armed forces.” – Co-Sponsors DNC Presidential candidate Sen Clinton, Hillary Rodham [NY]; DNC Presidential candidate Sen Obama, Barack [IL]; Sen Menendez, Robert [NJ]; Sen Coburn, Tom [OK] – (This was the first effort to also assure that GOP Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain [AZ] would be cleared to run against the DNC primary victor.)

From June 11, 2003 to February 28, 2008, there had been eight (8) different congressional attempts to alter Article II – Section I – Clause V – natural born citizen requirements for president in the U.S. Constitution, all of them failing in committee — All of it taking placing during Barack Obama’s rise to political power and preceding the November 2008 presidential election.

In politics, there are no coincidences… not of this magnitude.

Finally on April 10, 2008, unable to alter or remove the natural born citizen requirement to clear the way for Barack Obama, the U.S. Senate acts to shift focus before the election, introducing and passing S.R.511: – declaring Sen. John McCain a “natural born citizen” eligible to run for and hold the office of president. There was never any honest doubt about McCain, the son of a U.S. Navy Commander. The Sponsor of the resolution is Democrat Senator Claire McCaskill, [MO]

S.R.511 States that John Sidney McCain, III, is a “natural born Citizen” under Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution of the United States. S.R511passed by a 99-0 unanimous consent of the Senate, with only John McCain not voting. The basis was – “Whereas John Sidney McCain, III, was born to American citizens;” – a condition not met by Barack Hussein Obama II. – Co-Sponsors DNC Presidential candidate Sen Clinton, Hillary Rodham [NY]; DNC Presidential candidate Sen Obama, Barack [IL]; Sen Leahy, Patrick J. [VT]; Sen Webb, Jim [VA]; Sen Coburn, Tom [OK] (They had made certain that John McCain would run against Barack Obama)

However, in the McCain resolution is also this language – “Whereas the Constitution of the United States requires that, to be eligible for the Office of the President, a person must be a `natural born Citizen’ of the United States; – Whereas the term `natural born Citizen’, as that term appears in Article II, Section 1, is not defined in the Constitution of the United States;”

The U.S. Constitution is not a dictionary. The definition of “is” is not in the constitution either. Yet this is the text that would later be issued in Congressional Research Service talking points memos distributed to members of congress, to protect an individual that all members of congress know and understand to be an “unconstitutional” resident of the people’s White House – Barack Hussein Obama II.

Once again, as the political left was unable to alter the U.S. Constitution by way of legitimate constitutional process, they resorted to altering the constitution via precedent setting, in short, knowingly electing and getting away with seating an unconstitutional president in order to alter Article II requirements for the office via breaking those constitutional requirements.

The press would not ask any questions and the American people were already too ill-informed of their constitution to know or too distracted by daily life to care. The press would provide the cover, swearing to the lies of an unconstitutional administration put in power by criminal actors focused only on their lofty political agenda of forever altering the American form of government.

The people would be caught up in a steady diet of daily assaults on their individual freedom and liberty and overlook the most obvious constitutional crisis in American history, the seating of an unconstitutional and anti-American president. [SOURCE CREDIT]

There you have it. Make of this what you will.

It raises many questions.

Would people like Claire McCaskill and Hillary Clinton really come to John McCain’s aid if they did not have an ulterior motive?

Why were people like Inhofe, Issa, and Rohrabacher either sponsoring or co-sponsoring these pieces of legislation? After all, these men were later three of Obama’s biggest critics. We heard lots of threats and promises from them that yielded no results. Could it be that these men are just more shining examples of “all bark and no bite”? (See Definition of “Smoke and Mirrors“)

If it is true that the definition of “natural born citizen” only involves having one citizen parent then why all the fuss?

History, as the saying goes, is a lie agreed upon, and there has perhaps been no bigger lie detrimental to the future national security and economic well-being of the United States that the 14th Amendment, clearly written to protect the rights of African-American slaves liberated by the first Republican President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, somehow confers citizenship on the offspring of anybody whose pregnant and can sneak past the U.S. Border Patrol.

U.S. citizenship is rendered meaningless if it is defined as an accident of geography and it is the clear that this was not the intention authors of those who wrote the 14th Amendment and shepherded it into the Constitution. President Trump has rightly targeted birthright citizenship as an historical error that needs to be corrected:

President Trump said in a newly released interview he plans to sign an executive order ending so-called “birthright citizenship” for babies of non-citizens born on U.S. soil — a move that would mark a major overhaul of immigration policy and trigger an almost-certain legal battle…

Michael Anton, a former national security adviser for Trump, pointed out in July that “there’s a clause in the middle of the amendment that people ignore or they misinterpret – subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

“What they are saying is, if you are born on U.S. soil subject to the jurisdiction of the United States – meaning you’re the child of citizens or the child of legal immigrants, then you are entitled to citizenship,” Anton told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson in July. “If you are here illegally, if you owe allegiance to a foreign nation, if you’re the citizen of a foreign country, that clause does not apply to you.”

Anton is stunningly correct and clearly echoes the sentiments and legislative intent of the authors of the 14th Amendment. The only question is whether this historical error is better corrected though a clarifying amendment, legislation, or through a Trump executive order. GOP Rep. Steve King, R-IA, has proposed legislation:

In January of this year, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) proposed the Birthright Citizenship Act of 2015 (HR 140) that seeks to amend current law by making requirements for citizenship more narrow, and, in King’s opinion, more constitutional…

“A Century ago it didn’t matter very much that a practice began that has now grown into a birthright citizenship, an anchor baby agenda,” King said. “When they started granting automatic citizenship on all babies born in the United States they missed the clause in the 14th Amendment that says, ‘And subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’ So once the practice began, it grew out of proportion and today between 340,000 and 750,000 babies are born in America each year that get automatic citizenship even though both parents are illegal immigrants. That has got to stop.”…

King’s bill seeks to amend section 301 of the Immigration and Nationality Act to clarify those classes of individuals born in the United States who are nationals and citizens of the United States at birth. The bill states that a person born in the United States is a citizen if one parent is “(1) a citizen or national of the United States, (2) an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence in the United States whose residence is in the United States; or (3) an alien performing active service in the armed forces.”

But some would argue that no clarifying legislation is necessary and that as a result of President Trump’s appointment of originalist interpreters of the Constitution to the Supreme Court, the original intent of the 14th Amendment can be restored.

The Supreme Court has never said birthright citizenship is constitutional and legal scholars have noted that supporters of birthright citizenship, a gross misinterpretation of the 14th Amendment, ignore the intentions of those who wrote it.

Peter H. Schuck, Yale University’s Simeon E. Baldwin Professor of Law Emeritus and self-described “militant moderate,” reiterated his opinion Monday that birthright citizenship is not required by the U.S. Constitution. Though opposed to many of the president’s positions, he was surprised the administration has not made opposition to citizenship for the children of illegal aliens more central to its immigration policy…

On at least one key immigration stance, however, Schuck appears to be in agreement with President Trump. In the 1990s, along with Yale Political Scientist Rogers Smith, he determined, in a book called Citizenship Without Consent, that the policy of granting citizenship to everyone born on American soil, including so-called “anchor-babies” — those born to illegal aliens — was not mandated by the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as is popularly trumpeted by open-borders supporters. Trump came to the same conclusion on the campaign trail, once stating, “We’re the only ones dumb enough, stupid enough to have it.”

This misinterpretation of the 14th Amendment, written to guarantee the citizenship rights of freed slaves after the Civil War, has morphed the amendment into a guarantee of birthright citizenship. Merely being born on American soil is said to make you a U.S. citizen. Sneak past the U.S. Border Patrol, have your baby, and you not only have a U.S. citizen but what is called an “anchor baby” allowing you to stay and bring others in under the banner of family reunification.

Trump during the campaign correctly called the flawed concept of birthright citizenship the “biggest magnet” for illegal immigration. He would end it and as for family reunification, Trump is all for it, just saying it should happen on the other side of the U.S.-Mexico border. As The New York Post reported:

Trump described his expanded vision of how to secure American borders during a wide-ranging interview Sunday on NBC’s “Meet The Press,” and in a position paper he later released, saying that he would push to end the constitutionally protected citizenship rights of children of any family living illegally inside the US.

“They have to go,” Trump said. “What they’re doing, they’re having a baby. And then all of a sudden, nobody knows… the baby’s here.”

Birthright citizenship is the exception and not the rule worldwide. Even our European brethren, as fond as they are of refugees and open borders, do not embrace it. As Liz Peek writes on FoxNews.com, birthright citizenship is indeed a big magnet for illegal immigration:

The United States is one of only two developed countries in the world that still bestows citizenship on every person born on our nation’s soil. Having a child become a U.S. citizen is the greatest reward possible for someone who enters the country illegally. Such status is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in free education and benefits, not to mention the incalculable value of our country’s security and freedoms. Historically, there was bipartisan enthusiasm for dumping this program; even Democrat Harry Reid had proposed its termination.

The costs of birthright citizenship are staggering, especially when you consider the costs of what is called “chain migration”. Once of age the baby born here can sponsor others. It has even given rise to what is called “birth tourism” where pregnant women are brought to the United States, ostensibly as tourists, to give birth here and have their child dubbed an American citizen by birth.

Critics have said that the task, even if justified, is well nigh impossible, requiring amending the U.S. Constitution. In reality, it may not require altering the 14th Amendment — only correctly interpreting it — perhaps through clarifying legislation.

The 14th Amendment, passed, on July 3, 1866, reads, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” This was done, again, to guarantee the citizenship rights of freed slaves, not illegal aliens. The 1857 Dred Scott decision had held that no black, not even a freed black, could be considered a citizen.

John Eastman of the Claremont Institute testified before the subcommittee, saying, the Supreme Court has never actually held that anyone who happens to make it to U.S. soil can unilaterally bestow citizenship on their children merely by giving birth here.

Although such an understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment has become widespread in recent years, it is not the understanding of those who drafted the Fourteenth Amendment, or of those who ratified it, or of the leading constitutional commentators of the time. Neither was it the understanding of the Supreme Court when the Court first considered the matter in 1872, or when it considered the matter a second time a decade later in 1884, or even when it considered the matter a third time fifteen years after that in the decision many erroneously view as interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment to mandate automatic citizenship for anyone and everyone born on U.S. soil, whether their parents were here permanently or only temporarily, legally or illegally, or might even be here as enemy combatants seeking to commit acts of terrorism against the United States and its citizens.

Eastman argues that the modern view of the Fourteenth Amendment ignores a key phrase in the Citizenship Clause. Mere birth on U.S. soil just isn’t enough. “A person must be both ‘born or naturalized in the United States’ and ‘subject to its jurisdiction.’”

During debate on the 14th Amendment, Sen. Jacob Merritt Howard of Michigan added jurisdiction language specifically to avoid accident of birth being the sole criteria for citizenship. And if citizenship was determined just by place of birth, why did it take an act of Congress in 1922 to give American Indians birthright citizenship, if they already had citizenship by birthright under the 14th Amendment?

Rep. John Bingham of Ohio, who is regarded as the father of the 14th Amendment, said it meant that “every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your constitution itself, a natural born citizen…”

Rep. Nathan Deal of Georgia sought to clarify the situation through HR. 698 the Citizenship Reform Act of 2005, which would have amended the Immigration and Nationality Act to deny automatic citizenship to children born of the United States of parents who are not U.S. citizens or are not permanent resident aliens.

HR. 698 declared: “It is the purpose of this Act to deny automatic citizenship at birth to children born in the United States to parents who are not citizens or permanent resident aliens.” The bill undertook to clarify “subject to the jurisdiction of the United States” to the meaning originally intended by Congress in the14th Amendment.

The current interpretation of birthright citizenship may in fact have been a huge mistake and given the burden illegal aliens have imposed on our welfare, educational, and health care systems as well as through increased crime on our legal system, a very costly one.

There may be hope of correctly interpreting the 14th Amendment through a court case as President Trump reshapes the courts, particularly the Supreme Court, with justices of a more “originalist” bent. As noted, the misinterpretation could be corrected through clarifying legislation. We can correct it judicially or legislatively and we should. Donald Trump was right — becoming a U.S. citizen should require more than your mother successfully sneaking past the Border Patrol.

Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not represent the views of Townhall.com.

The president rolled another flash grenade onto our political stage this week, and it sent the Trump Hate Media into a predictable tizzy.Trump was called a racist – for the umpteenth time – because he said he plans to use an executive order to put an end to birthright citizenship.

Birthright citizenship, made possible by the 14th Amendment, is the automatic granting of U.S. citizenship to any Mexican, Chinese, Russian, Kenyan or Martian baby who is born on American soil.

I made up the Martian part, though it’s probably true.

But thanks to a relatively recent and very liberal misinterpretation of the 14th Amendment, even though the baby’s parents are non-citizens, if they are born in America they get full U.S. citizenship.

For the rest of their lives these so-called “anchor babies” are given the right to live and work in the United States and collect benefits, just like anyone born in Beverly Hills.

Even better for the lucky foreign babies, when they turn 21 they can start applying for green cards to bring in their mothers, fathers, siblings, grandparents and Facebook friends to America.

I made up the Facebook part.

But it sounds like something President Trump might say when he is arguing that anchor babies need to be outlawed because they create the “chain migration” that allows extended family members from foreign lands to end up living in the U.S..

Not that you learned it in high school, but the 14th Amendment, known as one of the Reconstruction Amendments, was passed after the Civil War in 1868.

The first sentence of the first section reads:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Not that you learned it in college, but the 14th Amendment was specifically written to grant full citizenship rights to all former slaves and their children and to prevent the states from writing new laws depriving them of those rights (which, shamefully, the Southern states did when they passed their racist Jim Crow laws in the late 1800s).

Not that you learned it from the media, but the 14th Amendment was never intended to automatically award U.S. citizenship to the babies of foreign parents who happen to be here when their child was born.

It certainly wasn’t meant to create the “birth tourism” business, which is run by Russian and Chinese companies that make it possible for wealthy foreigners to visit the United States for a month or two so their newborns arrive on our soil.

It was reckless of President Trump to throw out his “anchor baby” grenade a week before the important midterm elections.

It only gave the Trump Hate Media and Democrats another chance to bash, blame and mock the president.

The media never tried to explain how something written to protect slaves 150 years ago had morphed into an open legal door for birthright citizenship.

The liberal media never got around to talking about how the “birthright clause” has created the growth of a birth tourism industry.

And President Trump’s media enemies sure didn’t remind us that before the Democrats were against getting rid of anchor babies, they were in favor of getting rid of them.

We badly need immigration reform that is smart for America, not harmful.

I hope Trump can win his latest battle.

Ultimately it’s going to be up to the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether birthright citizenship for foreign nationals as we’ve known it for decades can be ended with a few strokes of his executive pen.

But there’s little doubt that birthright citizenship is wrong for the United States. So are anchor babies.

It’s time for us to fix the constitutional loophole that created them. It’s also time for our schools to do a better job of teaching American history.

The citizenry’s unquestioning acquiescence to anything the government wants to do in exchange for the phantom promise of safety and security has resulted in a society where the nation is being locked down into a militarized, mechanized, hypersensitive, legalistic, self-righteous, goose-stepping antithesis of every principle upon which this nation was founded…This is not freedom…This is a jail cell.

It’s time boys! All Trump has done is kick the can down the road. As soon as they get rid of him (and they will by hook or crook) we will go right back to Bareback Yomama 2.0. — jtl, 419

“A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.”―Edward Abbey, American author

Life in a post-9/11 America increasingly feels like an endless free fall down a rabbit hole into a terrifying, dystopian alternative reality in which the citizenry has no rights, the government is no friend to freedom, and everything we ever knew and loved about the values and principles that once made this country great has been turned on its head.

We’ve walked a strange and harrowing road since September 11, 2001, littered with the debris of our once-vaunted liberties.

We have gone from a nation that took great pride in being a model of a representative democracy to being a model of how to persuade the citizenry to march in lockstep with a police state.

What began with the passage of the USA Patriot Act in October 2001 has snowballed into the eradication of every vital safeguard against government overreach, corruption and abuse.

The citizenry’s unquestioning acquiescence to anything the government wants to do in exchange for the phantom promise of safety and security has resulted in a society where the nation is being locked down into a militarized, mechanized, hypersensitive, legalistic, self-righteous, goose-stepping antithesis of every principle upon which this nation was founded.

This is not freedom.

This is a jail cell.

Set against a backdrop of government surveillance, militarized police, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, eminent domain, overcriminalization, armed surveillance drones, whole body scanners, stop and frisk searches, roving VIPR raids and the like—all of which have been sanctioned by Congress, the White House and the courts—our constitutional freedoms have been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded.

Our losses are mounting with every passing day.

Free speech, the right to protest, the right to challenge government wrongdoing, due process, a presumption of innocence, the right to self-defense, accountability and transparency in government, privacy, press, sovereignty, assembly, bodily integrity, representative government: all of these and more have become casualties in the government’s war on the American people, a war that has grown more pronounced since 9/11.

Since the towers fell on 9/11, the American people have been treated like enemy combatants, to be spied on, tracked, scanned, frisked, searched, subjected to all manner of intrusions, intimidated, invaded, raided, manhandled, censored, silenced, shot at, locked up, and denied due process.

In allowing ourselves to be distracted by terror drills, foreign wars, color-coded warnings, underwear bombers and other carefully constructed exercises in propaganda, sleight of hand, and obfuscation, we failed to recognize that the true enemy to freedom was lurking among us all the while.

The U.S. government now poses a greater threat to our freedoms than any terrorist, extremist or foreign entity ever could.

While nearly 3,000 people died in the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. government and its agents have easily killed at least ten times that number of civilians in the U.S. and abroad since 9/11 through its police shootings, SWAT team raids, drone strikes and profit-driven efforts to police the globe, sell weapons to foreign nations, and foment civil unrest in order to keep the military industrial complex gainfully employed.

No, the U.S. government is not the citizenry’s friend, nor is it our protector, and life in the United States of America post-9/11 is no picnic.

In the interest of full disclosure, here are some of the things I don’t like about life in a post-9/11 America:

I don’t like being treated as if my only value to the government is as a source of labor and funds.

I don’t like government officials who lobby for my vote only to ignore me once elected. I don’t like having representatives incapable of and unwilling to represent me. I don’t like taxation without representation.

I don’t like fusion centers, which represent the combined surveillance efforts of federal, state and local law enforcement.

I don’t like being treated like an underling by government agents who are supposed to be working for me. I don’t like being threatened, intimidated, bribed, beaten and robbed by individuals entrusted with safeguarding my rights. I don’t like being silenced, censored and marginalized. I don’t like my movements being tracked, my conversations being recorded, and my transactions being catalogued.

I don’t like the NDAA, which allows the president and the military to arrest and detain American citizens indefinitely.

I don’t like the Patriot Act, which opened the door to all manner of government abuses and intrusions on our privacy.

I don’t like the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which has become America’s standing army in direct opposition to the dire warnings of those who founded our country.

I don’t like military weapons such as armored vehicles, sound cannons and the like being used against the American citizens.

I don’t like government agencies such as the DHS, Post Office, Social Security Administration and Wildlife stocking up on hollow-point bullets. And I definitely don’t like the implications of detention centers being built that could house American citizens.

I don’t like the fact that police departments across the country “have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft.”

I don’t like the partisan nature of politics today, which has so polarized Americans that they are incapable of standing in unity against the government’s abuses.

I don’t like the entertainment drivel that passes for news coverage today.

I don’t like the fact that those within a 25-mile range of the border are getting a front row seat to the American police state, as Border Patrol agents are now allowed to search people’s homes, intimately probe their bodies, and rifle through their belongings, all without a warrant.

I don’t like police precincts whose primary purpose—whether through the use of asset forfeiture laws, speed traps, or red light cameras—is making a profit at the expense of those they have sworn to protect. I don’t like militarized police and their onerous SWAT team raids.

I don’t like Americans being assumed guilty until they prove their innocence.

I don’t like technology being used as a double-edged sword against us.

Most of all, I don’t like feeling as if there’s no hope for turning things around.

Now there are those who would suggest that if I don’t like things about this country, I should leave and go elsewhere. Certainly, there are those among my fellow citizens who are leaving for friendlier shores.

However, I’m not giving up on this country without a fight.

I plan to keep fighting, writing, speaking up, speaking out, shouting if necessary, filing lawsuits, challenging the status quo, writing letters to the editor, holding my representatives accountable, thinking nationally but acting locally, and generally raising a ruckus anytime the government attempts to undermine the Constitution and ride roughshod over the rights of the citizenry.

Our country may be in deep trouble, but all is not yet lost.

The first step begins with you.

1. Get educated. Know your rights. Take time to read the Constitution. Study and understand history because the tales of those who seek power and those who resist them is an age-old one. The Declaration of Independence is a testament to this struggle and the revolutionary spirit that overcame tyranny. Understand the vital issues of the day so that you can be cognizant of the threats to freedom. Stay informed about current events and legislation.

2. Get involved. Become actively involved in local community affairs, politics and legal battles. As the adage goes, “Think nationally, act locally.” America was meant to be primarily a system of local governments, which is a far cry from the colossal federal bureaucracy we have today. Yet if our freedoms are to be restored, understanding what is transpiring practically in your own backyard—in one’s home, neighborhood, school district, town council—and taking action at that local level must be the starting point. Responding to unmet local needs and reacting to injustices is what grassroots activism is all about. Getting involved in local politics is one way to bring about change.

3. Get organized. Understand your strengths and weaknesses and tap into your resources. Play to your strengths and assets. Conduct strategy sessions to develop both the methods and ways to attack the problem. Prioritize your issues and battles. Don’t limit yourself to protests and paper petitions. Think outside the box. Time is short, and resources are limited, so use your resources in the way they count the most.

4. Be creative. Be bold and imaginative, for this is guerilla warfare—not to be fought with tanks and guns but through creative methods of dissent and resistance. Creatively responding to circumstances will often be one of your few resources if you are to be an effective agent of change. Every creative effort, no matter how small, is significant.

5. Use the media. Effective use of the media is essential. Attracting media coverage not only enhances and magnifies your efforts, it is also a valuable education tool. It publicizes your message to a much wider audience.

6. Start brushfires for freedom. Take heart that you are not alone. You come from a long, historic line of individuals who have put their beliefs and lives on the line to keep freedom alive. Engage those around you in discussions about issues of importance. Challenge them to be part of a national dialogue. As I have often said, one person at a city planning meeting with a protest sign is an irritant. Three individuals at the same meeting with the same sign are a movement. You will find that those in power fear and respect numbers. This is not to say that lone crusaders are not important. There are times when you will find yourself totally alone in the stand you take. However, there is power in numbers. Politicians understand this. So get out there and start drumming up support for your cause.

7. Take action. Be prepared to mobilize at a moment’s notice. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you’re located or what resources are at your disposal. What matters is that you recognize the problems and care enough to do something about them. Whether you’re 8, 28 or 88 years old, you have something unique to contribute. You don’t have to be a hero. You just have to show up and be ready to take action.

8. Be forward-looking. Beware of being so “in the moment” that you neglect to think of the bigger picture. Develop a vision for the future. Is what you’re hoping to achieve enduring? Have you developed a plan to continue to educate others about the problems you’re hoping to tackle and ensure that others will continue in your stead? Take the time to impart the value of freedom to younger generations, for they will be at the vanguard of these battles someday.

9. Develop fortitude. What is it that led to the successful protest movements of the past headed by people such as Martin Luther King Jr.? Resolve. King refused to be put off. And when the time came, he was willing to take to the streets for what he believed and even go to jail if necessary. King risked having an arrest record by committing acts of nonviolent civil disobedience. A caveat is appropriate here. Before resorting to nonviolent civil disobedience, all reasonable alternatives should be exhausted. If there is an opportunity to alter the course of events through normal channels (for example, negotiation, legal action or legislation), they should be attempted.

10. Be selfless and sacrificial. Freedom is not free—there is always a price to be paid and a sacrifice to be made. If any movement is to be truly successful, it must be manned by individuals who seek a greater good and do not waver from their purposes. It will take boldness, courage and great sacrifice. Rarely will fame, power and riches be found at the end of this particular road. Those who travel it inevitably find the way marked by hardship, persecution and strife. Yet there is no easy way.

11. Remain optimistic and keep hope alive. Although our rights are increasingly coming under attack, we still have certain freedoms. As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we can still fight back. We have the right to dissent, to protest and even to vigorously criticize or oppose the government and its laws. The Constitution guarantees us these rights. In a country such as the United States, a citizen armed with a knowledge of the Bill of Rights and the fortitude to stand and fight can still be a force to be reckoned with, but it will mean speaking out when others are silent.

Practice persistence, along with perseverance, and the possibilities are endless. You can be the voice of reason. Use your voice to encourage others. Much can be accomplished by merely speaking out. Oftentimes, all it takes is one lone voice to get things started. So if you really care and you’re serious and want to help change things for the better, dust off your First Amendment tools and take a stand—even if it means being ostracized by those who would otherwise support you.

Once the people had been created, their desire for peace could be easily fabricated as well. Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu tutored Arafat in how to play the West like a fiddle.

Muslim congressional candidate Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) celebrated her primary victory with several anti-Israel tweets, including one that read: “My roots as a Palestinian American are strong and important.” The truth about those roots, however, could surprise even Tlaib, as before the 1960s, there were no Palestinian people. They were invented as a propaganda weapon against Israel.

In 1948, the nascent state of Israel defeated forces from Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen that had been determined to destroy it utterly. The jihad against it continued, but it held firm, defeating Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon again in the Six-Day War in 1967, and Egypt and Syria yet again in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In winning these victories against enormous odds, Israel won the admiration of the free world, leading to the largest-scale and most audacious application in Islamic history of Muhammad’s dictum “War is deceit.”

In order to destroy the impression of the tiny Jewish state facing enormous Muslim Arab foes and prevailing, the Soviet KGB (the Soviet Committee for State Security) developed the fiction of an even smaller people, the “Palestinians,” menaced by a well-oiled and ruthless Israeli war machine.

In AD 134, the Romans had expelled the Jews from Judea after the Bar Kokhba revolt and renamed the region Palestine. The Romans had plucked this name from the Bible; it was the name of the Israelites’ ancient enemies, the Philistines. But never did the term “Palestinian” refer to anything but a region — not to a people or an ethnicity.

In the 1960s, however, the KGB and Hajj Amin al-Husseini’s nephew Yasir Arafat created both these allegedly oppressed people and the instrument of their freedom — the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

Ion Mihai Pacepa, who had served as acting chief of Cold War-era Communist Romania’s spy service (Pacepa later authored many articles for PJ Media), later revealed what happened:

The PLO was dreamt up by the KGB, which had a penchant for “liberation” organizations. There was the National Liberation Army of Bolivia, created by the KGB in 1964 with help from Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara … the KGB also created the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which carried out numerous bombing attacks.

…

In 1964 the first PLO Council, consisting of 422 Palestinian representatives handpicked by the KGB, approved the Palestinian National Charter — a document that had been drafted in Moscow. The Palestinian National Covenant and the Palestinian Constitution were also born in Moscow, with the help of Ahmed Shuqairy, a KGB influence agent who became the first PLO chairman.

For Arafat to head the PLO, he had to be a Palestinian. Pacepa explained:

[Arafat] was an Egyptian bourgeois turned into a devoted Marxist by KGB foreign intelligence. The KGB had trained him at its Balashikha special-operations school east of Moscow and in the mid-1960s decided to groom him as the future PLO leader.

First, the KGB destroyed the official records of Arafat’s birth in Cairo, and replaced them with fictitious documents saying that he had been born in Jerusalem and was therefore a Palestinian by birth.

Arafat may have been a Marxist, at least at first, but he and his Soviet handlers made copious use of Islamic anti-Semitism. KGB chief Yuri Andropov noted:

[T]he Islamic world was a waiting petri dish in which we could nurture a virulent strain of America-hatred, grown from the bacterium of Marxist-Leninist thought. Islamic anti-Semitism ran deep. … We had only to keep repeating our themes — that the United States and Israel were ‘fascist, imperial-Zionist countries’ bankrolled by rich Jews.

Islam was obsessed with preventing the infidels’ occupation of its territory, and it would be highly receptive to our characterization of the U.S. Congress as a rapacious Zionist body aiming to turn the world into a Jewish fiefdom.

PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein explained the strategy more fully in a 1977 interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw:

The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct “Palestinian people” to oppose Zionism.

For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.

Once the people had been created, their desire for peace could be easily fabricated as well. Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu tutored Arafat in how to play the West like a fiddle. Pacepa recounted:

In March 1978, I secretly brought Arafat to Bucharest for final instructions on how to behave in Washington. “You simply have to keep on pretending that you’ll break with terrorism and that you’ll recognize Israel — over, and over, and over,” Ceausescu told him [Arafat]. … Ceausescu was euphoric over the prospect that both Arafat and he might be able to snag a Nobel Peace Prize with their fake displays of the olive branch. …

Ceausescu failed to get his Nobel Peace Prize. But in 1994 Arafat got his — all because he continued to play the role we had given him to perfection. He had transformed his terrorist PLO into a government-in-exile (the Palestinian Authority), always pretending to call a halt to Palestinian terrorism while letting it continue unabated.

Two years after signing the Oslo Accords, the number of Israelis killed by Palestinian terrorists had risen by 73 percent.

This strategy continued to work beautifully, through U.S.-brokered “peace process” after “peace process,” from the 1978 Camp David Accords into the presidency of Barack Obama and beyond, with no end in sight.

Western authorities never seem to ponder why so many attempts to achieve a negotiated peace between Israel and the “Palestinians,” whose historical existence everyone by now takes for granted, have all failed.

The answer, of course, lies in the Islamic doctrine of jihad. “Drive them out from where they drove you out” is a command that contains no mitigation and accepts none.

CNN host, Chris Cuomo, says he has a ‘tip’ for President Trump. Cuomo’s upset sprung from Trump’s continued irritation with the NFL players who choose to kneel during the American Anthem. Calling these men ‘the most unifying aspects of our culture”.

Statement alone shows how out of touch Cuomo really is. Maybe it’s because he is submerged in the liberal media world but as far as I can tell, the kneeling players have been far from ‘unifying’. Maybe, Cuomo missed the die-hard fans who burned their expensive sports merchandise? Maybe he missed how the NFL has struggled to keep the stands full by restricting players from kneeling on the field?

No matter what Cuomo’s deal is, like a true Dem he made the issue about race and not about the flag, respect for the men and women who serve, and our Nation. Take a look:

“After more than a year of Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players sitting and kneeling during the national anthem, the controversy over their protests has reached a tipping point.

More players than ever before knelt or sat during the anthem on Sunday, after Trump argued that those who did so should be suspended or fired.

On Friday, Trump said: “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a b—- off the field right now, out — he’s fired!’”

Some NFL fans who agree with Trump showed their support of the president — and their anger at players — by burning their teams’ merchandise.

Robert Smith posted a video of himself on Sunday burning more than $1,000 worth of Pittsburgh Steelers merchandise, the Daily Mail reported. Earlier that day, the Steelers had not participated in the anthem, with the exception of offensive tackle Alejandro Villanueva, who served three tours of duty as an Army Ranger in Afghanistan before beginning his NFL career.”

This is an absolutely stunning display of media bias, that captures just how irresponsible and downright dangerous the mainstream propaganda outlets have become.

If you remember George Orwell’s iconic novel 1984, the protagonist, Winston Smith, is an employee in the Ministry of Truth, Big Brother’s propaganda outlet where Smith is charged with deleting inconvenient facts from past newspapers to suit the party’s narrative.

Once an allegorical comment on current events in England, now that sounds eerily similar to the newsroom of a major network news outlet, doesn’t it?

In the case of CNN’s coverage of the recent Islamic school shooter training compound discovered in the New Mexico desert, this was quite literally the case.

Western Journal has the story:

Police found 11 missing children starved and abused in New Mexico and in court documents, they reported that the men were training the children to commit mass school shootings, as reported by The Daily Caller.

On Tuesday, Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe said that he believed the men who ran the compound, Siraj Wahhaj and Lucas Morten, are “extremist(s) of the Muslim belief.”

According to Biz Pac Review, Hogrefe reaffirmed that FBI analysts also said that the suspects are “extremists of the Muslim belief.”

Wahhaj’s father also has ties to Muslim rights groups and “was an un-indicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing.”

When CNN first reported on the incident, they had the original police statement with the Muslim extremist phrase included. However, they decided to delete the phrase later on, with no editor’s note to explain that they had deleted the “Muslim” reference.

They note that it did not take long for readers to notice the conspicuous change:

I don’t know why CNN took it out of their story, but in light of today’s news, I’ll just point out that the article originally included the sheriff’s statement that the individuals were “extremists of the Muslim belief.”

Mexican national Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes, who has been charged with the first-degree murder of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, was extradited to the United States Tuesday night for prosecution by the Department of Justice. Osario-Arellanes was arrested by Mexican authorities in April 2017.

“The Department of Justice is pleased that the suspected killer of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry has been successfully extradited to the United States and will now face justice for this terrible crime,” said Attorney General Jeff Sessions. “We are grateful for the efforts of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Marshals Service and U.S. Customs and Border Protection as well as our law enforcement partners in Mexico. To anyone who would take the life of an American citizen, in particular an American law enforcement officer, this action sends a clear message: Working closely with our international partners, we will hunt you down, we will find you, and we will bring you to justice.”

Agent Terry was murdered on December 14, 2010 patrolling Rico Valley, Arizona. While Osorio-Arellanes is suspected of pulling the trigger, six other men have also been charged with his death. Three have pleaded guilty and two were convicted by a jury. Jesus Rosario Favela Astorga, who has been charged, is waiting to be prosecuted.

According to DOJ, “the indictment charges the defendants with first-degree murder, second-degree murder, conspiracy to interfere with commerce by robbery, attempted interference with commerce by robbery, use and carrying a firearm during a crime of violence and assault on a federal officer.” The men are also being charged with assaulting Border Patrol Agents William Castano, Gabriel Fragoza and Timothy Keller, who came under fire with Terry the night he was killed.

The men were part of a rip crew and used weapons to kill Terry that were purposely trafficked by the Obama Justice Department to Mexican drug cartels through Operation Fast and Furious.

“The arrest and extradition of Osorio-Arellanes reflects the steadfast commitment and tireless work of the United States and our law enforcement partners in Mexico, who shared the common goal of seeking justice for the murder of Agent Brian Terry,” U.S. Attorney Adam Braverman said. “When an agent makes the ultimate sacrifice while serving his country, we must hold all the individuals who played a part in this tragic outcome accountable for their actions. This extradition moves that important goal forward.”

Osario-Arellanes will be arraigned in U.S. District Court in Tucson, Arizona, Wednesday afternoon.

Robinson has not changed his message since April. Back then he told his city council, “It seems like every time we have one of these shootings, nobody wants to put the blame where it goes, which is at the shooter’s feet. You want to turn around and restrict my rights…You want to restrict my right to buy a firearm and protect myself from some of the very people you are talking about in here tonight. The law abiding citizens of this community, of other communities we are the first ones taxed and the last ones considered.”

This past Saturday, Robinson stood at the Floria state capitol and proclaimed liberty and the exercise of the God-given rights of the American people was the answer to the problem of school shooters.

Robinson addressed comments made on his social media page that asked, “When was America ever great?”

“I told ’em, America was great at Bunker Hill,” he said, “and it was great at Lexington and Concord.”

“When the founders of this nation, ordinary men and women stood up and fought the mightiest army in the world to secure our freedom,” he added. “That’s when America was great!”

He then went on to recount some famous battles that were fought in American history, including Gettysburg, Fredericksburg, Antietam. While I disagree that those battles were the result of slavery nor did they actually end slavery, but just made virtually every man a slave to the federal government.

Robinson then went on to point out the greatness of America at D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, Iwo Jima, as well as other wars that were fought against Communists and Nazis.

In dealing with all of this there is a common thread that runs through each of the accounts that Robinson expressed in our history: guns. Guns not only defeated tyrants, but were used to secure the liberty that was won.

Robinson said that he talked loud because he wanted everyone to hear him.

“It is time for the law-abiding citizens in this country to get as loud and proud with their message as the Left has with their lies,” he began.

He then spoke about the young people who had been protesting in the March for our Lives event that day. Robinson said that he listened to them as they spoke, and all that he heard was repetition from them about “statistics and this and that,” and he pointed out that all those were probably given to them “by some Communist, some Leftist, some Socialist.”

However, Robinson reminded his hearers that there is an element in all of it that many forget: Common sense.

No, he wasn’t talking about the nonsensical notion of “common sense gun laws.” Robinson was talking about something more real.

“The world is made up of predator and prey.”

“Prey is defenseless,” he said. “Predators are not.”

“We can defend ourselves from predators because our God in Heaven endowed us with the inalienable right to arm ourselves with whatever we see fit to protect ourselves whether it be from criminals or a “government or whatever it may be,” said Robinson. And the one thing these children do not understand is the world is not made of rainbows and lollipops.”

“There are people right here close to this state house that will cut your throat for a dollar, and they’ll do it for sure if you don’t have a way to defend yourself,” he added.

Speaking to the kids, he said they needed to not only wake up, but “wake up quick,” echoing sentiments I’ve stated following the Parkland, Florida shooting back in February. The kids at the forefront such as David Hogg are nothing more than ignorant children who don’t know history and don’t know they are being used to disarm not only law-abiding American citizens, but make themselves prey for a predatorial government that is seeking to control them.

“They better crack open a Bible and right next to it they better crack open a history book, and they better take some lessons from both,” Robinson admonished. “Because the defenseless always end up under the thumb of tyrants and despots.”

Listing off such tyrants such as Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Castro, he pointed out that they all went for the guns of the people.

“The only reason you have to speak up and be a free person is because you have the ability to defend your freedom, and you don’t defend your freedom with a pen. You defend your freedom at the point of a gun.”

Then, Robinson went there. Yep, he exposed the mindset of those who are just fine with murdering the innocent in the womb in the most barbaric and brutal ways and said, “If they are willing to kill the most innocent and defenseless among us, what do you think they’ll do to their enemies that are trying to stand up against them?”

“When folks like that tell you you don’t need a gun, guess what you need?” he said rhetorically. “You need a gun.”

Robinson also took on the issue of open borders and pointed out that by allowing everyone in unvetted and unchecked, drugs, crime, corrupt politicians and more will follow them into this country and those supporting such notions are crying that we don’t need AR-15s and the like, but that’s exactly what will be needed by allowing such people into the country.

Judge William Alsup has a BS in engineering, has written computer programs for his ham radio hobby, delves deeply into the technical aspects of numerous cases before him, and even studied other programming languages for a complex Oracle v. Google lawsuit.

As presiding judge in People of the State of California v. BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and Royal Dutch Shell, he insisted that the litigants present their best scientific evidence for and against the state’s assertion that fossil fuel emissions are causing dangerous climate change. Now he wants to see, not just the alleged damages from burning oil, natural gas and coal – but also the immense benefits to humanity and the people of California from using those fuels for the past 150 years and more.

Environmental and climate activists, including cities pursuing climate lawsuits against oil companies, almost never acknowledge those benefits, which are far-reaching and indisputable. We can only hope attorneys Anne Champion, Philip Curtis, Diehl Kemper, et al. and friends of the court will do justice to the many blessings attributable to our use of these once unimaginable energy resources.

For countless millennia, our ancestors struggled to survive amid deprivation and backbreaking dusk-to-dawn labor, often on the brink of starvation – with the bulk of humanity living little better than their domesticated animals. Average nasty, brutish and short life expectancy hovered in the low thirties.

But then, suddenly and miraculously, in barely two centuries, health, prosperity and longevity began to climb. First coal, then oil, then natural gas paved the way, providing the fuels for transportation, communication, refrigeration, electricity and other incredible technologies that improve, enhance, safeguard and save lives. Incomes increased eleven-fold. Mass die-offs so confidently predicted by Malthus and Ehrlich never materialized. In fact, global life spans more than doubled, and today billions of people enjoy living standards that even kings and queens could not dream of 120 years ago.

Sadly, equal numbers of people still struggle on the edge of survival. A billion and a half are still without electricity, two billion still exist on a few dollars a day, and millions still die every year from insect-borne, lung and intestinal diseases – largely because they still burn wood and dung, instead of fossil fuels.

In 1900, New York City’s 3.4 million people relied on 100,000 horses whose “tailpipes” emitted 2.5 million pounds of manure and 60,000 gallons of urine every day. Sanitation crews cleaned it up, dumped it mostly in local rivers, and hauled dead horses to rendering plants. Farmers devoted thousands of acres just to growing horse feed. Imagine what today’s 8.6 million NYC residents would require and emit.

Today, far more powerful, far less polluting, trucks, cars, buses, trains, subways and airplanes move people, food and products far more quickly and efficiently. They take us to work, school and worship services; to the grocery, bank, drug store, doctor and restaurant; to movies, picnics and sporting events. Fire trucks help us battle devastating conflagrations, and ambulances take our injured to hospitals.

All these vehicles (internal combustion and electric) exist because of, are fueled by – and travel on roadways made with fossil fuels: asphalt from oil, metal and concrete manufactured using fossil fuels.

Even electric cars require oil, gas and coal for manufacturing and recharging. Indeed, the earth-moving machines, drilling rigs and production platforms, pipelines, foundries, factories and other technologies needed to extract, process and fabricate raw materials into the world around us exist because of fossil fuels. Every bit of metal, plastic, concrete, wood, fabric and food we see results from fossil fuels. Even wind turbines, solar panels and biofuels are impossible without the fuels that California so loves to hate.

Medical devices, computers, cell phones, radios and televisions, kitchen appliances, household and office heating and air conditioning, millions of other products of every description require fossil fuels for their components, manufacturing and daily operation. The schools and research laboratories that made our amazing technologies and other advancements possible are themselves made possible by fossil fuels.

The modern agricultural equipment and practices that feed the world share the same ancestry: tractor and harvester fuel, ammonia fertilizer from natural gas, pesticides and herbicides from petrochemicals. Carbon dioxide from burning these fuels helps crop, forage, forest and grassland plants grow faster and better, with less water and better resistance to droughts and diseases. Our bounteous grain and other crops mean fewer famines, except where forced starvation is used to subdue and eliminate enemies.

Indeed, between 1961 and 2011, the total monetary value of CO2 enhancement for 45 crops reached an estimated cumulative value of $3.2 trillion! Carbon dioxide’s annual enrichment value rose from $19 billion in 1961 to $140 billion in 2010. Between 2012 and 2050, these benefits will total $9.8 trillion!

Pharmaceutical and cosmetic products all have their roots in petrochemicals – as do paints, synthetic fibers and plastics. Hockey and football players are dressed head to toe in fossil-fuel-sourced materials.

High-rise office and residential buildings made possible by steel and concrete allow our cities to grow upward, instead of just outward, preserving millions of acres of wildlife habitats and scenic areas.

Then there’s electricity. Look around you, and try to imagine your life without this wondrous, pervasive energy source. Electricity was properly ranked humanity’s second most significant innovation of the past 6,000 years, after the printing press! It has created, shaped, defined and powered the modern world, and facilitated virtually every technological achievement of the past century. Electrification of nations is undeniably the world’s most significant engineering and life-enhancing achievement of the past century.

Economic growth, quality of life and longevity are directly correlated to sufficient, reliable, affordable electricity. In today’s world, nothing happens without it: communication, transportation and research; the operation of every home, office, hospital, factory and airport; refrigeration to preserve food and medicine; heating and air conditioning to save lives and enable people to survive and prosper in any climate.

Electrification will be increasingly important in the 21st century, and world electricity consumption is forecast to double within four decades, as electricity supplies an increasing share of the world’s ever-increasing energy demand. Fossil fuels will continue generating at least 75% of electricity, even in 2050.

Hydroelectric and nuclear (which radical environmentalists also despise and oppose), a bit of geothermal, and a smattering of unreliable, weather-determined wind and solar power will supply the rest. The land, resource and environmental impacts of building and operating wind and solar must also be considered.

Social media and internet search engines (to run biased searches for alarmist climate news) also depend on electricity – 91.4% of which was generated by fossil fuels, nuclear and hydro in 2016 in the USA.

Increased productivity generated by all these technologies creates the leisure time and wealth that enable everyone to enjoy evenings, weekends and holidays – and the fossil fuel transportation to go places (including to faraway, exotic locales and 5-star hotels for IPCC climate change confabs).

Finally, aside from nuclear-powered ships, our highly mechanized military gets there “the fastest with the mostest” thanks to fossil fuels, to combat terrorism and provide for our national defense.

Barring major efficiency, battery storage and other technology improvements, renewable energy cannot possibly replace fossil fuels. Judge Alsup has no choice but to rule in favor of the oil company defendants … and all who rely on oil, gas and coal for the countless, life-enhancing benefits barely touched on here.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and author of articles and books on energy, climate change, carbon dioxide and economic development.

Roger Bezdek is an internationally recognized energy analyst and president of Management Information Services, Inc.

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